ABOUT THE BIOCULTURAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE, INC.

The Biocultural Research Institute, Inc. is a not for profit educational organization
registered in the state of Florida. The mission of the Institute is to research,
present, and interpret the biocultural structures of humankind through seminars,
lectures, and scholarly publications. The directors of the Institute hold advanced
degrees in philosophy, psychology, social science, humanities, and medicine. This
ensures the multi disciplinary scope of the organization.

The foundation of the Biocultural Research Institute is the Biocultural Paradigm
as discovered by Dr. Maria Colavito. The Paradigm was created to assuage the
nature/nurture dichotomy so prevalent in current models of human sciences, and to
assess the correlations between individual human predilections as based upon early
brain development in children and emerging cultural trends.

CURRENT AREAS OF RESEARCH

Education and Applied Philosophy

The Habits of Mind Model of education as developed by Dr. Antonio T. de Nicolas
(in his book by the same title), is the foundation of the Biocultural Research
Institute's educational projects. This model was developed and taught in the
Philosophy of Education course at SUNY Stony Brook for nearly two decades. The
Institute also offers research and training opportunities in Biocultural
Philosophy-an applied philosophy degree developed for practitioners in the human
services professions as well as professionals in the Humanities who desire
credentials in the field of philosophical or educational counseling.

Anthropology

In the field of anthropology, directors of the Institute have participated with
the Union of International Associations, a United Nations Project, in researching
issues related to cultural autonomy and preservation. These references can be
accessed through the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential, edited by
Anthony Judge. Other scholarly publications using the biocultural paradigm have
appeared in the field of biomedical ethics and anthropology. These references may
be accessed in the Library section of this site.

Psychology and Philosophical Practice: In 1996, the Biocultural Research Institute
opened a private clinic in Madrid, Spain for children and their families. To date,
the Instituto de Integracion Biocultural has treated several hundred families using
the Biocultural Assessment Model and educational training program. The Biocultural
Research Institute is affiliated with the American Philosophical Practitioners
Association, and the directors of the Institute are Certified Philosophical
Practitioners.

THE BIOCULTURAL PARADIGM

INTRODUCTION: ON THE NATURE / NURTURE DEBATE

The nature/nurture controversy, sometimes known as the evolution/environment
controversy, seems to have trickled down into the information systems of the
vernacular world as an unfortunate rift between dueling scholarly camps. In one
camp, the nature/evolution camp, lie those scholars whose research on the forefront
of neurobiological discoveries have led to amazing revelations about the biological
origins of many of our "human" characteristics. In the other camp, the
nurture/environment camp, lie those scholars whose research on the forefront of
sociological discoveries have led to amazing revelations about the sociological
origins of many of our "human" characteristics. The glaring negative implications
of wholeheartedly ingesting the evolutionary model seem obvious. Where do these
evolutionary "discoveries" place our time-honored beliefs in human freedom, will,
choice, individuality and the like? What of "original sin", moral judgement, reward
and punishment, not to mention the "work and you too shall succeed" tenet? Finally,
does accepting this evolutionary model, at root, mean accepting that we, as humans,
are basically composed merely of deterministic, unconscious quanta? While few of us
would truly espouse these coldly deterministic conclusions, most would also aver
that accepting the basic tenets of the proponents of the environmental paradigm
wholeheartedly likewise smacks at the face of reason, especially in a society that
prides itself on state-of-the-art scientific discoveries as its primary criterion
of superiority.

THE PARADIGM

The Biocultural Paradigm is offered as a model that transcends both the nature and
the nurture camps by recognizing the neurobiological origins of human development
AND by deliniating exactly how sociological influences and when sociological
influences can and cannot affect those neurobiological invariants.

Utilizing existing discoveries in evolutionary neurobiology and Selection Theory,
the scientific basis of the Biocultural Paradigm is established. This Paradigm is
composed of five proto-cultural models ("biocultures") which correspond to the five
evolutionary centers of our neurological structures; our five "brains". They are:

The Maia Bioculture, whose primary neural link is the Reptilian brain and
its communication to the amygdala and septal regions of the Limbic System.

The Mythos Bioculture, whose primary neural link is the prefrontal cortex
and the Limbic System.

The Right Brain Mimetic Bioculture, whose primary neural link is the right
hemisphere of the Neo-cortex.

The Left Brain Mimetic Bioculture, whose primary neural link is the left
hemisphere of the Neo-cortex.

The Logos Bioculture, whose primary neural link is to the "interpreter
module" of the left hemisphere of the Neo- cortex.

Each bioculture, then, is formed by the cultural manifestation of the primacy of one
neural function over the others. While, initially, it is through individual human
development that choices are made as to the primacy of certain neurological traits over
others; eventually,(through the habitual repetition of the primacy of certain
neurological links at the expense of others), these individual traits become societal
ones; thus forming the Socio-biological basis for the Biocultural Paradigm.

The sociological evidence for the Biocultural Paradigm is founded primarily upon
socio-linguistic grounds, by analyzing the relationships between the literary remnants
of certain cultures and their corresponding social, political and religious structures.
The literary evidence is examined as it elucidates a neural map of cortical activity
(thereby offering clues as to the biocultural slant of the group), while the social,
political and religious systems are examined for evidence of neurological predispositions
that manifest externally as cultural substitution systems. In other words, the
Biocultural Paradigm examines both the apparent structure of external, societal "reality"
and the structure of internal, cortical "reality"; the reasons why and how the internal
reality CREATES the external one, and why and how studying the external reality (the
nurture/environment data) without first understanding the workings and limitations of the
internal reality (the nature/evolutionary data) can oftentimes lead to biased results.